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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29516910">How will you fix... this</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carcajou/pseuds/Carcajou'>Carcajou</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Murdoch Mysteries</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon-Typical Violence, It's Not Paranoia If They're Really Out To Get You, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Whump, if your trauma response is triggered clap your hands</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 03:27:23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,796</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29516910</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carcajou/pseuds/Carcajou</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens between the time that Jack sees the vandalism at his store, and he breaks things off with Llewellyn.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jack Walker/Llewellyn Watts</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>How will you fix... this</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Content warning: This fic is about trauma, specifically Jack’s trauma from surviving gaybashings, police brutality, homophobic slurs, death threats, and childhood physical/emotional abuse (this is more just hinted at than expansive). Jack is dealing with some flashbacks, disassociation, paranoia, shame, and just generally Heavy Feelings. I usually write more comfort with my hurt, and I might add an epilogue with comfort later, but for now, just a lot of suffering.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He feels eyes on him. He wants to shut himself in his shop, lock the door, and disappear. He wants all these witnesses to leave and forget the word painted in red next to his name.</p><p>Rationally, he knows that he should get a bucket and a brush and get to work scrubbing the paint. He should work on a lie to give to his customers. He needs to maintain his calm, professional persona.</p><p>But his hands are shaking. There is a small crowd gawking at the wreckage to the butchery’s storefront. Jack recognizes some faces in the crowd, and g-d there’s <em>whispering</em>—  </p><p>“Go home, I’ll deal with this.” Llewellyn’s voice is firm, unemotional. Out of the two of them, he’s clearly more capable of handling this situation.</p><p>Jack hesitates, glancing at the back of Llewellyn’s neck. He doesn’t want to leave on his own, but really that’s pathetic. He gets his legs moving, almost tripping over his own feet in his hurry.</p><p>He wants to run. He wants to run from all the stares and the whispers and all of it. His legs are spasming from the want of it, or from the way he’s forcing himself not to. He can’t look guilty, can’t look bothered, or else—</p><p>The blood is rushing past his ears, and his breakfast threatens to make a reappearance.  Swallowing thickly, Jack schools his face to something neutral. He stands up straighter; he’s about to cross the street to get home. And then he freezes.</p><p>---</p><p>--</p><p>-</p><p>One of the constables throws him face first into a brick wall. It knocks all the air out of his lungs and leaves him disoriented.</p><p>Jack crumples to his knees, bracing his hands on the alley wall. The alley smells of manure, especially at ground level. It’s dark, bisected by a sliver of lamp light from the main street.</p><p>He’s only a block away from his apartment. He was so close to getting home. But then the detective had intercepted him, flanked by two uniformed coppers, and what could he do but comply.</p><p>The detective is talking to him. What was his name? The one from the pub, that Llewellyn was nervous about. “I-- g--- -- ask y—one more t---.”</p><p>His head heavy, Jack blinks and tries to turn around to face the coppers.</p><p>“Don’t bloody move!”</p><p>A cold pressure at the base of his neck—it’s a boot, not crushing, but threatening to. For some reason, his brain chooses now as a time to remember Harry McMaster. Harry was a boy from his rugby team who got an unlucky knee to his spine and never walked again. His family put him in an institution.</p><p>The idea of being paralysed shocks Jack into speaking. He rasps out, “I’m not fighting, I just can’t hear too well if I’m not facing you.”</p><p>They let him turn around, and Jack sits up with his back against the wall, his arms crossed protectively over his sore ribs. He focuses on the detective. <em>Edwards</em>. That was his name.</p><p>Edwards repeats himself. “I’m going to ask one more time. If I like your answer, you might get to crawl back to your hovel tonight.” The detective’s voice is cold and even, and Jack hates him the more for it. “Now, will you testify as to what you’ve been doing with Detective Watts?”</p><p>With a twinge of pain, Jack takes a breath and speaks. “We had couple of pints at the Tipsy Ferret. We’re friends. That’s it.”</p><p>The copper laughs—a fake, empty laugh. “Friends? Who would want to be friends with a known invert like yourself, Mr. Walker?” Edwards shakes his head and says to the constables at his side, “I shouldn’t have bothered. This thing isn’t a real man. He has no real decency—”</p><p>“Wait.” Jack sits up taller, struck with a desperate idea to protect Llewellyn. Jack can’t do much, but he has to try. “I…I had one too many drinks tonight. And in the moment, I might have… forgotten myself.”</p><p>With his lip curled in disgust, Edwards urges him to continue. “And then what happened?”</p><p>“That’s just it.” Jack sighs, trying to look appropriately contrite and genuine. “It was just a moment, in the pub, fixing his tie, you know. Watts, he’s a smart man, but he didn’t catch on to what I was playing at. If he had, he would have punched me. And I would have deserved it.”</p><p>“You expect me to believe that?” Edwards crouches in front of him, and Jack suppresses a wince at the motion. “Come on, tell the truth. Do the right thing.”</p><p>His hands are shaking, crossed in front of his torso. His self-preservation instincts are begging for him to curl up into a ball, to pull back and avoid further pain. But Jack forces himself to stay level with the copper’s beady eyes. “I’m telling the truth.”</p><p>Edwards sneers, “You really have no shame for what you’re doing. I’m going to personally see to it that you pay dearly for your crime. Your business, your apartment, even your precious little cocksucker—”</p><p>“Go fuck yourself.” Jacks spits out, even though it’s stupid. But screw this buzzard and his nasty threats against Llewel—</p><p><em>Crack</em>.</p><p>-</p><p>--</p><p>---</p><p>He can’t move; it’s as if his shoes are stuck to the sidewalk in ankle-deep tar. His breaths are ragged, each one progressively sharper as the panic sets in. He tastes blood.</p><p>It must only last a few seconds, but it feels like time slows down. Edwards is across the street, his beady eyes fixed on Jack. Even after he turns and walks away, Jack can still feel his scrutiny.</p><p>Was Edwards involved in the attack on the butchery? Did he talk someone else into it? How many people was he talking to?</p><p>How many people know about him?</p><p>---</p><p>--</p><p>-</p><p>“Everyone, allow me to introduce you to Jack Walker. Now I have to warn you, this molly has no shame or remorse. If you lads need to defend yourselves against him, well we’d consider it a <em>public service</em>.”</p><p>One of Jack’s eyes is swollen shut from getting his face kicked in. He needs to pivot to get a view of the cell and his future cellmates. There are two—no three men, all boozers by the looks of it—in lock up. They’re looking at him.</p><p>Edwards pushes Jack forward until his face is pressed up against the bars. His head is thrumming with pain, and the metal bar digging into his forehead doesn’t help.</p><p>One of the men reaches through to pat Jack’s face. “Ooh I think we can handle him.” The slob’s breath is a thick soup of alcohol, and Jack can’t turn away. “The bugger won’t stand a chance against a real man.”</p><p>Edwards uncuffs him, and Jack’s thrown into the cell.</p><p>“Get his arms!”</p><p>“Hold ‘im steady, boys.”</p><p>“What, she’s not gonna put up a fight?”</p><p>Jack doesn’t fight back. He can’t take on three at once. He focuses on staying up on his feet, planting himself solidly. He knows how to take a thrashing. Things get much worse if you get forced onto the ground.</p><p>“Let’s see if this loosens your tongue.”</p><p>The first hit lands squarely on his mouth. His lip splits open. He staggers, but the two men yank his arms and bring him back to the middle of the cell.</p><p>“Is the poof gonna cry?”</p><p>He doesn’t answer. He probably will cry. He hopes Edwards has left.</p><p>-</p><p>--</p><p>---</p><p>Jack knows from experience that Edwards has no problem delegating the dirty work to others. It shouldn’t surprise him that he’d be spreading rumours and fouling things up from the sidelines. He’s a buzzard through and through: circling in the sky, investigating a wounded animal, waiting to pick at the dead flesh.</p><p>Jack breaks off into a run, darting around corners and side streets to avoid being tailed. He ducks into a gated doorway and pants. He waits for several long minutes, but his pursuers don’t turn the corner.</p><p>“Edwards was supposed to be <em>handled</em>,” Jack mutters. He wipes the sweat on his brow with the back of his hand.</p><p>Llewellyn had assured him that the copper wouldn’t be a problem anymore. But Llewellyn can’t really guarantee their safety. Nothing can.</p><p>He’s been so happy and comfortable these past months that he forgot.</p><p>Jack sets off for his apartment. It still feels as if someone is dogging him. He’ll toss quick looks over his shoulder off and on, but he never catches the stalker. It’s unnerving.</p><p>He passes by dozens of people going about their business. They’re chatting, smiling, going into work. It’s just another day in the bustle of the city.</p><p>He’s barely holding it together. He is a disjointed set of bones and organs, tied with muscle and ligament, tendons torn and stretched to their limit. Just a battered, broken thing, hunted and helpless.</p><p>---</p><p>--</p><p>-</p><p>He doesn’t fight back. He doesn’t beg or cry, except for sharp gasping and slurred mumbling. It’s one less thing his father will be able to lord over him, one less thing to disappoint him with.</p><p>Not that his father is alive to see it.</p><p>Then again, maybe his father would be on his side, in this scenario. Three men versus one was hardly fair, even if the one was a sissy. His father had cared about <em>fair</em> and <em>right</em>. The man believed in stern discipline, with a solid closed hand slap and a verbal dressing-down. Or a caning when Jack got disrespectful.</p><p>The men hitting him now are his size, but they’re not skilled. Their fists miss as often as they land. One of them accidentally pops him in the throat. Sloppy. Jack has been in enough fights—or beatings—to know that he can manage this much.</p><p>He doesn’t try to raise his arms and defend himself. He lets them keep going, over and over.</p><p>The blows blur into each other. He can barely see through the small slit of his right eye. His mouth is numb, his lip bleeding freely down his chin and neck. He breathes roughly, through his mouth because his nose—there’s something wrong with it.</p><p>He's starting to consider that this might not stop. His attackers are very clear that they want him dead. The constables don’t seem to be stepping in anytime soon. In their eyes, Jack is a criminal getting what he deserves. A failure of a human being.</p><p>He prays that his mother doesn’t find out.</p><p>“Christ he’s heavy.”</p><p>“Bastard can’t even stand.”</p><p>“Put the bugger down.”</p><p>The arm supporting his shoulder is gone, and Jack loses his balance. He falls to the concrete floor. A sharp pain shoots up from his ankle to his hip.</p><p>He can feel the men step closer to him. He’s completely defenseless; he doesn’t have the strength to even sit up.</p><p>One kick to his spine. Or his liver. Over. Buried. His mother will shatter when she hears the news.</p><p>“P-please. Please.” He hates the sound of his own begging. “Please s-stop.”</p><p>They don’t listen. And everything fades away.</p><p>-</p><p>--</p><p>---</p><p>Jack locks his door behind him.</p><p>There are still plates in the sink from breakfast. It feels like a lifetime ago. What had they done this morning? Just a leftover soup heated up, a quick glance through the paper, Llewellyn pressing his shirt in a hurry because he overslept. The usual quiet domestic routine. Nothing remarkable.</p><p>After shrugging off his overcoat, he goes through the motions of tidying the kitchen. There’s a cup left in the drip coffee maker. He drinks it cold, no milk or sugar.</p><p>The liquid sloshes into his stomach and is violently rejected. Jack is sick on the hardwood floor, sudden and revolting. He manages to run to the washroom before the second wave hits him.</p><p>---</p><p>--</p><p>-</p><p>As if the thrashing weren’t punishment enough, Jack wakes up on the cold floor with his head pounding.</p><p>Careful not to move and thereby draw attention to himself, he takes stock of his surroundings. He’s still in limbo. He can hear someone coughing the next cell over. His corner of the room is empty, as far as he can tell.</p><p>It must be early morning. Jack can just barely squint out his right eye; his left is swollen and crusted over. In fact, his whole face is probably a bloodied, caked on mess.</p><p>He tries to breathe in through his nose and he can’t. At least he can breathe through his mouth; his tongue tastes like blood and sand. Bruises, cuts, and pains all to be expected, after the night he had.</p><p>Aside from the various problems with his head, Jack finds the rest of him is still in one piece. Some aches in his ribs, especially where his side slept on the concrete floor. His hands and feet are cold.</p><p>He needs to splash some water on his face. And drink some. Maybe he can get some bandages or ointment from the constable on duty.</p><p><em>Or maybe the copper will offer me a bath and a feather bed.</em> Jack thinks wryly.<em> Yeah my brain must be pretty shaken up.</em></p><p>He sits up, and a wave of nausea crashes into him. Crawling on his knees, he makes it to the metal toilet just in time. The retching burns up his throat. Something runs down his chin—blood, from his lip.</p><p>Jack braces both hands on the toilet seat, closes his eyes, and waits for the agony to end.</p><p>-</p><p>--</p><p>---</p><p>He rests his forehead on the cool ceramic of his toilet seat. He focuses on breathing. He tries not to think about the mess he’ll have to clean up in his kitchen. Later.</p><p>He tries not to think about the people whispering “sodomite” around his shop. He tries not to think about the bastard detective and he tries not to think about who else is in on it. He tries not to think about them going after the people he cares about.</p><p>He tries not to think about what’s coming for him.</p><p>He tries but his thoughts are <em>loud</em> and he can hear them over the grinding of teeth so he needs to get a grip but he is losing things to hold onto. He knows what it’s like to be powerless and he never wants to beg an asswipe copper for a drink of water <em>again</em>—</p><p>---</p><p>--</p><p>-</p><p>The constable, a round-faced Brit, passes a full cup of water through the open slot of the cell door.</p><p>Jack takes it, checks there’s no visible dirt or piss in it, and rasps out a dry, “Thanks.”</p><p>He downs it and gives the cup back. “Would it be at all p-possible,” he needs to pause to breathe through his mouth, “to get some bandages or s-salve for my cuts?”</p><p>The copper—he looks so young, he might be fresh on the job—shakes his head. “No, we can’t do that, sorry.”</p><p>Swallowing thickly, Jack leans against the cell door—then he remembers himself and keeps the distance between them. “I-I understand.” He feels like there is a pit of greasy tar in his guts. He might be sick again. “But is there any way to get—even just a rag and a bowl of water? I’m concerned about my eye.” He points at the still firmly swollen shut left eye.</p><p>The constable says, “You know, if you just told the detective what he wants to know, you could get out of here with a minor charge.”</p><p>“I’ve told him everything I can.” Jack would rather go to prison and face hundreds more beatings than put Llewellyn in his place.</p><p>“Think carefully.” The constable stares at Jack’s face. “Come on, what would your <em>mother</em> say to see you now?”</p><p>That is a whole other level of hurt. Jack has nothing to say in response—nothing that wouldn’t get him in more trouble he can’t afford.</p><p>After a pause, the copper shrugs. “Well, think on it. For now, I’ll get you another glass of water.”</p><p>Jack needs the water, so he pretends to be grateful.</p><p>-</p><p>--</p><p>---</p><p>The floor is clean, he’s taken a couple tablets to settle his stomach, and now all that’s left to do is patiently wait.</p><p>Unfortunately, Jack’s head has different ideas.</p><p>He’s sitting at his dining table, gripping an empty teacup so hard it could shatter at any moment.  </p><p>He can’t make it stop.</p><p>He can’t stop the thoughts and feelings. He keeps seeing images from his past—keeps <em>feeling them</em> like he’s back there. His arrest was over eight months ago, so he shouldn’t still be worrying over it. It wasn’t the first time he was threatened and beaten and thrown in jail. It probably won’t be the last. He just needs the thoughts to <em>go away damn it</em>—</p><p><em>Tap tap</em>.</p><p>Llewellyn’s at the door.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I didn't think (still don't) that it makes sense for Jack to randomly break up with Llewellyn. An intense traumatic crisis would explain that bit, but then it still doesn't explain why he immediately gets engaged. Hopefully Jack gets some character development in canon. One can dream.</p><p>Thank you for reading! I appreciate it.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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